Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.

Wednesday, April 19 2017

Baby pictures never get old. Let's welcome this little ball python to the world in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user TerryHeuring brighten your day!! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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When I go herping I always wear gloves in between animals. My primary reason for doing so is to avoid transmitting diseases within and among herps. Many people are a bit confused as to why I do that. For one there is literature in Veterinary Medicine that confirms that Batrachochytrium dendrobatitis more commonly known as Bd, an amphibian disease, can be transferred to lizards. Quite a strange occurrence when diseases can pass the species barrier as typically they are specific to a group of animals.

However, more frequently I’m seeing a lot of snakes with symptoms of Snake Fungal Disease (SFD). I hear from collectors that back then they’d find milk snakes with lesions and basically they’d shed them off and be fine after a while. The question is, was it highly contagious among the rest of the person’s collection? I’m not sure how many people may have housed symptomatic snakes with others to confirm whether it was contagious or not. Now we know that SFD is highly contagious, and not to be mistaken with other conditions like water blisters.

If you’re out collecting in the field keep in mind the well-being of the rest of your collection whenever you do pick up an animal that shows SFD symptoms, as it is becoming more and more prevalent. The USGS states that for infected individuals the mortality rate in the wild is 100%. Other literature says >80% likelihood of mortality. Whatever the case may be, antibacterial between snakes may not work as this is a fungus, but the truth of the matter is that even if you do pick up a sick snake and bring it home, housing it in warmer temperatures and a dry enclosure will result in the snake likely shedding off the disease. The key being that you quarantine that snake from the rest of your collection, and that its lesions aren’t so bad that it refuses to eat, as many times the worst symptoms are around the face and chin, making it difficult for them to feed.

It requires a couple of tests to confirm the disease in an individual and we are finding it in more and more species than those initially reported by the USGS. We know it’s prevalent in Texas and is constantly being found in more species of snakes in the state, too. So continue to enjoy the field herping, but take the necessary precautions to keep your personal collection disease free.

Some things that might help are disinfecting your field equipment if you use it at home too, or having a separate set for your snake collection and one for the field. Also, if you see early signs in a snake remove the water bowl and keep the moisture level as low as you can in its enclosure. Offer the animal water every couple of days by replacing their water bowl for a few hours and then removing it again.

Tuesday, April 18 2017

It's big, it's black and it is beautiful! This Indigo seen in Williston, FL while herping earns it spot in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ACO3124 !! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!

Blunt-headed tree snakes are blunt nosed and big eyed. This example is darker and with smaller blotches than usual.

When is a head high broken vining tendril not a head high broken vining tendril?

Why, when you grab a handful of tendrils to try and regain you balance and one of them suddenly turns a big-eyed head around on a slender neck to look at you, of course. And that is when you realize that you are doing exactly what you have warned your tour participants not to do—grab without ascertaining what it is that you are grabbing. This time, fortunately, no harm was done to either the grabber (me) or the grabee (snake—blunt headed tree snake, Imantodes cenchoa, to be exact). But the encounter did serve to rewarn me and there had been no one with me to witness the faux pas.

Blunt headed tree snakes are among the commonest and most distinctive of the arboreal serpents of the neotropics. The short snout, big eyes, and supple slenderness are echoed in this region (Depto Loreto, Peru) by only this snake’s congener, the much less often seen Amazonian I. lentiferus.

Nocturnal by preference, I. cenchoa bears prominent saddles, brown against a light reddish to chalk white ground color while the ground color of the tan saddled I. lentiferus is usually a lighter greenish tan. Both species prey on treefrogs and (usually) sleeping lizards. Adult size is 28 to 36 inches.

Monday, April 17 2017

So this weekend a friend of mine and I decided to go herpin here in South Texas. We left Friday afternoon around 4:30 P.M. and returned on April 2nd at around 3 P.M. We covered at least 5 counties (maybe 6) and travelled a total of 874.7 miles.

Just like back then when herpers would meet up somewhere in the Western regions of Texas we slept a few hours during the hottest part of the day between noonish and 5 P.M. then started all over again, throughout the night into the next morning, thereby allowing us to see all the night time herps and the morning herps. A few times we’d stop in for breakfast in some tiny town waiting for it to warm up before we’d go in search of the diurnal species, but also had deli meats and bread, because we got to make these road cruising trips affordable right?

We saw a total of 50 individuals of 17 different species (herps only), plus a lot of the spring wildflowers, numerous birds, and mammals too. Considering it’s relatively early in the season we considered our trip rather successful. My friend and I have different motives for what drives us to be so hardcore in the field. For some its research, others do it to find lifers, some to add to their personal collection, but all of us I think share one thing in common. Passion. An appreciation for a group of animals often misunderstood and underestimated.

Among our highlights were a slightly aberrantly colored Arizona elegans arenicola (Glossy snake), we both saw our first Mexican Hooknose (Ficimia streckeri) of the year, and we encountered a species that neither one of us had observed in South Texas, the Prairie Lizard (Sceloporus consobrinus), and well a lot of the common herps we’d expected to find. We put our lives on pause, stressed our bodies out, and all for what if nothing was collected, but data and photos? I’ll tell you. A complete feeling of satisfaction, fun, and for me, it is especially cathartic, to get away from the norm, indulge in the nature that’s still clinging on amid rows and rows of wind turbines and agricultural fields. It’s official, the herpin season is in full swing and more of these trips are underway.

In other words, lots of camaraderie, adventures, stories, encounters, networking, new friends and familiar faces all out doing the same thing. There’s always some nostalgia for the way “things used to be.” We’re a relatively small group of people and every year I look forward to encountering other herpers while meandering the back roads of south Texas terrain. Plus, we still didn’t find our target Milksnake to check off our annual list, so it’s on!